The Deuce returns with an even better season two

MAYBE The Deuce started off as “that James Franco TV show” but it now wholeheartedly belongs to Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Gyllenhaal’s hypnotic screen presence draws you in, locking your gaze and demanding you watch her every move. And she makes it seem so effortless.

The HBO series, airing locally on Foxtel’s Showcase channel, returns for its second season tonight and it’s the very definition of must-watch TV. This is a show that has, somehow, improved on its already remarkable debut season with a season that feels tighter and with greater narrative momentum and purpose.

This extraordinary, richly textured series from The Wire creator David Simon is the most evocative show on air right now, in the sense that nothing else so vividly renders a specific time and place as The Deuce does of that part of Manhattan in the late 1970s.

From the dripping sin in the peep show booths and the lascivious exchanges in the brothels to the corruption in the police force and the disco bars pumping out Barry White while people boogie in a drug-assisted daze, The Deuce is more than a window into this world.

You feel like you’re standing right in the middle of it, of being hit in the face with the smell of stale alcohol, pheromones and broken dreams lingering in the air.

And so much of it has to do with Gyllenhaal and the series’ decision to anchor the show around this incredibly compelling character, knowing they have a performer who could be softly spoken and commanding, sensual and confident.

In the four-year time-jump to 1977, Gyllenhaal’s character Eileen/Candy has successfully transitioned to working in the legal porn industry as a star, director and producer. She’s calling the shots on the set and wants to do something different — make porn feminist.

She’s has smart, artistic ideas about how the form could evolve to be more than quick ejaculation shots and skeezy, uninspired cheerleaders in the locker room scenario. She’s met with resistance but you can see her thinking, the ambition written all over her face.

It’s clear from the opening shot of the season, of the character striding down the street as if she owns the place — and you know what, she should.

Around Eileen/Candy, the world of the Deuce, a strip in midtown Manhattan that served as the then-red light district, is changing. Much of the sex work has moved inside to mob-connected establishments with Franco’s Vince (one of two twins the actor plays) collecting that monthly envelope stuffed with cash.

The power dynamics are shifting and CC (Gary Carr) and the other lavishly costumed pimps can feel the change on the wind, even if they can’t recognise it for what it is yet — so they cling onto the girls, exercising what control they can.

Whether women like Lori (Emily Meade) can find a life away from being kept under CC’s thumb, even as she starts to make a name for herself in pornography.

And after years of cops on the take, the new mayor wants decisive action to clean up the Deuce, especially after a tourist is stabbed to death in his car — expect to see Detective Alston (Lawrence Gilliard who played D’Angelo Barksdale in The Wire) become a bigger part of the story this season.

Elsewhere, Abby now has the run of the High Top and is putting on all kinds of punk acts, which goes perfectly with her Patti Smith-esque hairdo, and Paul is looking to set up his own gay bar.

It’s a wild, thrilling time on The Deuce and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

The Deuce starts tonight on Showcase on Foxtel at 9.45pm. It will then be released on Foxtel Now.

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